Saturday, 12 July 2008

Credit Crunch

In LEAP's publication on the Credit Crunch published in May, Graham Turner wrote "There is no doubt the authorities have badly underestimated the advent of 'peak oil'. Bio-fuels, by far the predominant cause of the rise in food prices, have been a disastrous response to the looming energy shortage".

In July, The Guardian revealed that "biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%", according to a leaked World Bank report. Graham Turner reported the effect of biofuels for LEAP two months before.

Graham Turner's new book, The Credit Crunch, has just been published by Pluto Press. Subtitled 'Housing Bubbles, Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis', the book traces the roots of the credit crunch back to the aggressive globalisation of the neoliberal era.

Northern Rock is no aberration, as the latest bank collapse in the US proves. As Graham Turner writes, "There is systemic failure, one born of a failed economic policy that gave too much power to corporates".

To understand why this system is now unravelling, and how it got to this, there is not a better book.